Execs from UK prodco Magic Light Pictures talk about producing animated Christmas films for the BBC ahead of this year’s special, Superworm.

Superworm is based on the book by author Julia Donaldson and illustrator Axel Scheffler

Animated Christmas specials have become a firm festive favourite among families in the UK since Channel 4’s classic 1982 half-hour film The Snowman, based on Raymond Briggs’ picture book of the same name.

Channel 4 has since gone on to broadcast various other Christmas specials based on children’s books, including Judith Kerr’s The Tiger Who Came to Tea and this year’s film, Terry Pratchett’s The Abominable Snow Baby.

The BBC has also jumped on to the trend of book-based animated Christmas specials, with the help of kids’ and family prodco Magic Light Pictures. This year’s festive film is Superworm, based on author Julia Donaldson and illustrator Axel Scheffler’s book about a super-strong worm with superhero abilities.

“It’s a really fun story, it’s incredibly imaginative and it’s quite special for us,” says Magic Light’s exec producer Barney Goodland. “Julia’s characters and rhyme are fantastic and the way she’s brought these little garden creatures to life is quite magical. I particularly like the way it opens up a world for children that they can see in their garden or a patch of grass in the streets, so it’s quite relatable. Kids can really get into the story and feel like it’s something that might be happening around them.”

Magic Light has produced eight other animated Christmas specials for the BBC that are based on Donaldson and Scheffler’s books – The Gruffalo, The Gruffalo’s Child, Stick Man, Room on the Broom, The Snail & the Whale, Zog, Zog & the Flying Doctors and The Highway Rat – and the prodco has struck up a real affinity with the author-illustrator team.

Barney Goodland

“Julia’s stories, particularly the ones she has developed with Axel, have a world and a coherence about them and also kindness and thematic intention that we really appreciate,” says Magic Light’s joint MD and producer Martin Pope.

“When we first started on them, my daughters were very young and I was reading the book of The Gruffalo to them. I realised it was a book that could be read again and again; the experience of The Gruffalo is just wonderful. These books are always a delight.”

The success and popularity of Donaldson and Scheffler’s books has also allowed Magic Light to attach quite high-profile cast to lend their voices to the films, with talent over the years including David Tennant, Olivia Colman, John Hurt and Helena Bonham-Carter.

“We have a wonderful casting director who comes up with suggestions and it’s always an absolute treat looking at the first list thinking, ‘Is it possible to get these people?’ The wonderful thing about Julia’s text and Axel’s world is that the cast almost always say yes. People are very keen to be in them,” Pope says.

Production of these animated Christmas specials takes about two years and, according to Pope, the Magic Light team meets regularly to review the books that are in the running for the next festive film.

“When my children were younger, they would occasionally ask what I did at work and I would explain that I really did sit with the team and we would all discuss, ‘Is what the mouse doing in this book more interesting and exciting than in this book?’” Pope says.

“We have monthly meetings where we review almost all of the titles and see who is pushing for one particular title to be the next film. It’s a continual discussion and there are no front runners and no back burners. We love them all, but something will emerge to the top. It’s like a papal conclave – eventually the white smoke will go up.”

Martin Pope

The UK’s pubcasters have firmly established themselves as the destination for family co-viewing on Christmas Day, but recent years have also seen streaming platforms like Netflix jump on the animated Christmas special bandwagon. One of Netflix’s productions, for example, is 30-minute film Angela’s Christmas, based on Irish author Frank McCourt’s children’s story.

While this opens up opportunities for Magic Light to produce for other platforms, the prodco intends to reserve its Donaldson and Scheffler adaptations for the BBC, which Pope says in an important player for shared viewing.

“We license the projects to the BBC and we talk to them closely, but they are very trusting of us; we decide which ones we’d like to do and they’ve never turned one down,” he says. “We love working with the BBC; it’s a hugely important organisation, particularly for kids and families, so we hope we’ll carry on with them and also work with other partners.

“We are very interested in shared viewing. Television brings people together and if you can create that thing which brings families together, which reproduces that wonderful moment of being a parent and experiencing The Gruffalo with your child, if you can experience that through the film and share it and enjoy it, isn’t that a great thing? That is something that the BBC, particularly on Christmas Day, does. There are definitely specials that we would love to make with all sorts of different companies, but for these particular films we think the BBC is a very good home.”

Goodland adds: “It’s lovely to be such a key part of families and children’s Christmas Days, knowing they’re all sitting down together to watch our films and sharing a moment together, which is quite rare at other times of the year when you’re watching TV, so that’s really special.”